The Professional Consequences of Having Needs
Last year at the start of fall, the wheels came off my wagon. Here's that story.
CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDE (not me)
Last year, toward the end of summer, I had a friend make a decision he couldn’t un-make. The exact details of who, how, and why are not important, but his decision caused me a cascade of problems that I struggled with and am still feeling the echoes of now.
Those events also had professional consequences that I never really grappled with until everything came apart at the seams and burnout slammed into me like a meteor. That caused understandable business issues that I am still dealing with. That’s what this is about.
During that time, obviously, I was a mess because my friend died. However, it was more complex than that. The partner he left behind and his housemate who had been there when it happened also needed help. Desperately. I provided as much as I could because leaving them alone in that aftermath isn’t something I was built to do.
Obviously, they had other people in their lives helping them with this, too. I was not the only one assisting them with everything they went through. However, I was doing a great deal of the heavy lifting. I chose to do it and do not regret this decision, to be clear.
However, as a result of meeting those very real and very important needs, I was running out of steam. I had a project I was trying to finish on a very tight deadline whose scope had changed dramatically (for good reason; no shade here), and I was experiencing my own very real grief around all of that. While dealing with my life changing a great deal due to some other personal situations I had going on.
Anybody who knows me in person knows I rarely ever talk about my emotions or share what’s going on in my head. I tend to be tremendously quiet and inside my own thoughts the majority of the time. This is pretty common for people with the history I have, and yes, I’m working on changing that. However, that doesn’t make it less true.
Because of all of that, I hit the deadline but didn’t provide the best quality work I could have provided at the time. This upset my client (understandably), and that relationship came apart. We’ve since reconnected and are on good terms, but at the time, I was a smoking crater and didn’t have the energy to really react to it.
Why am I sharing any of this? Because I want you to do better than I did.
I wasn’t forthright with my client about what had happened or how I was handling it because I had this belief that professional and personal should stay separate. While I consider many of my clients closer to friends (particularly after a few projects when we know each other), I often don’t share with them what I am thinking. Just like I don’t share what I am thinking even with my own husband.
Like I said, it’s common for people with my kind of history, but it’s not healthy.
Having learned from this experience, there are times when you need to just bloody open your mouth and tell people what’s going on. If I had told my client that a good friend of mine had died and what I was doing to help those he left behind, that client would’ve immediately given me more breathing room. And I know they would have because they’re a good person. Most people would, given what had happened and the intensity of what I was doing.
Now, I am getting better at telling people what’s going on with me. A little. Not much, but a little. I’m still wrestling with it, and that’s for my therapist to manage (and for me to work on).
I guess if there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s to not do what I did. When you’re in that kind of hurt and exhaustion, it’s okay to ask for patience from people around you. Even if you are in a professional circumstance. We cannot be professional all the time, and professional doesn’t mean ceasing to be a human being. I think that’s probably the key here. Professional doesn’t mean not human. It doesn’t mean not needing some space to breathe when things in your world have come apart and people are in pain.
Honestly, in those circumstances, I think telling people is the professional thing to do because our lives impact our ability to do things.
Now, speaking of being forthright… I am in a lot of pain, have a nasty head cold, and feel like the bottom of a shoe, so I’m going to go rest.
Hugs friend. Take care of yourself first, and the rest can wait. Communication helps almost every situation, but I’m often just as bad at it. It’s hard to be open and vulnerable when you’ve experienced that kind of trauma.
Hey, I know how you feel. It's hard to talk about such things. I work with a therapist weekly, and it seems that I uncover a new hurt that I "forgot about." For many years I was in a place where if I reacted, I would probably be put into a concrete cell, with no mattress, no pillow, and no clothes. That gets COLD! Even in the summer. They didn't even talk to me when my mother passed, they just put me in the strip cell til the next day. I found out about many friends deaths from other people who came to the camp from a higher level prison. One friend, when he was executed had no one he knew attending and the only person he had notified was me, another inmate. They woke me up at 12:15 AM to inform me. I say all this to say, I know where you're coming from. You feel that you can't give in to the grief because you feel you have to stay strong for others. But, doing this is not really the healthiest thing you can do. It's going to come out sooner or later, and I have discovered the worst time for this to happen is in the middle of the night when you are alone and there is just you, and memories that won't go away no matter what you do. So, don't bottle yourself up. Be open with those around you and expect a little grace, and give YOURSELF that grace too. It can help not to make the same decision your friend made.